The Hindu : New Delhi News : Bell casters reach out to PM, put their plight on metal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 10, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Bell casters reach out to PM, put their plight on metal

By Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI, MARCH 9. This is no ordinary letter. With huge panels of metal telling their side of the "development'' story complete with the forest officer on his motorcycle, the Jhara bell metal casters of Chhattisgarh are writing a letter to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, that his officials might find quite impossible to ignore.

Determined to leave a "nishan'' that will be difficult to erase, this poor tribal community has chosen a rather elaborate way to make its point. And with the help of designers of the Asian Heritage Foundation, a bunch of them is working to complete this missive in the next two months.

Dependent on the forests for their survival, the Jharas have suddenly found that they have become the `enemies' in the new balance of power. Unable to grasp the rapid changes of modernisation, they find that their references have changed and they are literally lost in the wilderness. Forced to depend on the market system for a living, even the quality of their metal-casting work declined over the years because of mass production.

"They worked for their own pleasure earlier, now it is to cater to the market. Since they depend on the forest for their survival, they respect it and know that they can't upset the balance. After the forests have been transferred to the Forest Department, they are now being seen as the destroyers. However, they have protected these forests for years and are now seeing them being wiped out slowly. Trees are being cut by the truck-loads by some people, but if they touch a tree then they are punished,'' explains Bhupendra Singh, a designer busy assembling these panels in the Capital.

Casting their story in metal, their panels speak of their world -- still miles behind the rest of the country. The receding groundwater, the `invasion' of country-made liquor in their areas, cricket-mania that has gripped their children making them forget their traditional sports and the loss of bio-diversity are only some of the problems they battle.

"Metal work from Raigarh brings in a lot of foreign exchange. But the lives of the tribals that make them don't change for the better. It is very sad. I remember I went there a few years ago and I had to wade through knee-deep water in the rain. They wanted to write a letter, but we thought it would be filed away and forgotten. We decided instead to use three-dimensional panels of metal that will cast shadow on the paper, so that it looks like calligraphy,'' says the Founder Trustee of The Asian Heritage Foundation, Rajeev Sethi.

A poetic way to tell their story, the letter with its tall panels will give the reader only a shadowy impression of how big their problems really are quite literally. A desperate cry for help from a community that is yet to enjoy the benefits of `civilisation', the Jharas are praying that their letter will grab the attention of policymakers for just long enough to make a small difference to their lives.

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